Definition
A writ directing an abbey or other religious house to provide a corody to the person entitled to receive it. The writ takes its name from its purpose: compelling delivery of a corody — that is, a maintenance allowance consisting of money, lodging, food, drink, clothing, or other necessaries — owed by a religious institution to a particular beneficiary. In practice, the writ functioned as a mechanism to enforce a pre-existing entitlement to institutional support, not to establish the right itself.
The underlying concept of a corody is essential to understanding the writ. A corody was a form of periodic allowance charged against a monastery or religious house, typically arising from a grant made by the founder or patron of the house, from purchase, or from royal prerogative. The Crown held a recognized right to place one corody-holder in any abbey founded by royal patronage, a right enforced through instruments like this writ.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is obsolete as a live legal concept but appears in medieval and early modern English legal records, writs registers, and ecclesiastical property disputes. Researchers encountering it in historical sources should treat it as a marker of ecclesiastical institutional law and the law of private maintenance obligations attached to religious foundations.
The term indexes directly to the writ registers of medieval English practice. Rapalje & Lawrence cites the Registrum Omnium Brevium (Reg. Orig. 264) as the primary source for the writ's form, which means researchers working in pre-dissolution English ecclesiastical records or early common law writ practice will find the most relevant original material there.
A key research trap: the dissolution of the English monasteries under Henry VIII (1530s–1540s) rendered corody obligations practically unenforceable against the former religious houses, and the writ effectively became a dead letter in English practice from that point. Sources written after the Reformation may treat the term historically rather than as a functioning procedural tool. Researchers should not assume continuity of enforcement mechanisms after dissolution.
The writ also connects to broader questions of the Crown's relationship to monastic foundations — patronage rights, advowsons, and the financial claims that laypeople could assert against religious institutions. A researcher following a chain of authority on any of these subjects may encounter corodio habendo as a collateral reference.
Burrill's Law Dictionary cross-refers only to "De Corodio Habendo," suggesting the full Latin form was the more common citation in earlier practice. Researchers should search under both forms in historical indexes and digests.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are largely in agreement on the bare definition: this is a writ to exact a corody from an abbey or religious house. Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence give materially identical treatments. Burrill declines to define independently, pointing instead to the fuller entry under the extended form "De Corodio Habendo."
Rapalje & Lawrence offers the most practically useful information by identifying Reg. Orig. 264 as the authoritative source for the writ's form and by providing a brief substantive gloss on corody itself — defining it as an allowance of money, lodging, food, drink, clothing, or other necessaries. This is the only one of the four sources that gestures toward the underlying right rather than only the procedural instrument.
None of the historical dictionaries address the post-Reformation obsolescence of the writ, nor do they situate it within the broader framework of Crown patronage rights over monastic institutions. Researchers relying solely on these entries would miss the historical context that explains why the writ existed and why it disappeared.
Jurisdictional Note
Corodio habendo is a writ of English ecclesiastical and common law origin with no meaningful counterpart in American or other common law jurisdictions. Its relevance is confined to English legal history, pre-Reformation ecclesiastical institutional practice, and the history of writs.